“This show is dedicated to my home country, Ukraine, says Aleksei Bordusov, aka AEC Interesni Kazki’ from his place of exile in Spain. He’s been preparing for his show “Victoria,” which opens tomorrow in Vienna, Austria, at the AG18 Gallery.

“Ukraine was brutally attacked by Russia on February 24^th,” says the artists who studied in Kyiv at the Academy of Fine Arts. “The war is going on. No end in sight. And every day we learn of new atrocities and crimes that Putin’s troops are committing against my people,” he says. “The title of the exhibition ‘Victoria’ represents what I believe in and wish for Ukraine.”

A muralist and fine artist who is known by many people for his works on the streets worldwide for the last decade – he prefers now not to think of himself as a “street artist,” says his press release. Indeed, his developed skills and aesthetic milieu are not often represented in the global street art scene. There simply isn’t a lot of old-school surrealism that makes it to the street unless it is flashy and with a commercial slickness. His work is of such quality and content that it’s now more often been compared with the surreal canon of Bosch, Goya, Dali, Riviera, and Moebius – here in Vienna, others mention Rudolf Hausner.

Whatever your passion, psychological or carnal, something is stirred in these canvasses – triggering the myths of your religious training perhaps, or the musical storytellers of 1970s post-psychedelia, or perhaps by looking at war told about and mediated on social media postings in your pocket. His figures are “heavily stepping forward, powerful, making their way through a mad world.” Maybe these mis-figures and their pungent palettes appear more familiar and make more sense today.

The new show opens tomorrow, and AEC says he will also be signing copies of his new book “Mythgazing.” Still, his feelings of utter displacement are only compounded by the normalcy of an art opening at a beautiful gallery. He’s named the new show “Victoria” because “it represents what I believe in and wish for Ukraine: Victory of the creation over destruction, good over evil, truth over lies. The Ukrainian people are defending themselves and fighting against pure evil.”

AG18 Gallery

Annagasse 18
1010 Wien, Vienna

238

138

45